Well I made it! 10,647 miles, 364 days, 20 countries and countless punctures. It’s a weird feeling, a mix of the satisfaction of achieving a huge goal as well as the relief of not having to strive for that goal anymore.

I’m in Chinas former capital Nanjing with the final stint to the Bund in Shanghai being all that is left in front of me. It’s not been the most interesting week of cycling but Nanjing has more than made up for it with it’s rich history. A national holiday next week has thrown a bunch more problems at me, regarding accommodation in Shanghai mostly being fully booked, but as always I’ve got a plan…

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Another week and, weirdly, another terracotta army. I’ve smashed through the 10,000 mile marker and have just a short 400 miles left until Shanghai. I had one more day of rain after my last post and then the sun burst back through the clouds.

Tough old stint down from Tibetan plateau to Xian to make it in time for my visa run to Hong Kong. A short update as I won’t stick to my usual format of a linear run through of the last 8 days as it has been a boring enough to ride, let alone to read, but in summary there have been two 100 mile days, lots of rain, mud, infected wounds and so many car horns tooting that I have begin to lose my grip on sanity…

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Well I’ve reached the end of my scenic detour and will now be heading straight down to Xian to do my visa run to Hong Kong. The last few days have been incredible visiting the various monasteries in Qinghai and Southern Gansu which have led to this being a rather photo heavy, and cycling light, post!

Short few days since the last post but they’ve been interesting. I went over the best Tibetan pass so far, had some great scenery riding through a canyon with a Buddhist mural, a detour taking me down my own private gorge on an animal track and finally hitting the 9,000 mile marker…

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It has been a mammoth two days of cycling over the mountains. Snow storms, a 4,120 metre pass, accidentally riding through a city closed to foreigners and the icing on the cake… a 230km day (144 miles).

Well I’m finally back on the road after mine and Stephens visa ordeal in Lanzhou. A typhoon has been twirling its way across the sea to the east of China leading to pretty much non stop rain. Despite this, and a particularly bad run of electronics dying, I have made it up onto the Qinghai-Tibet plateau!

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This will be a departure from the normal travelog posts for the bike trip from London to Shanghai. All was going well this week for my tough deadline of crossing China from the Kazakh border to Shanghai within the 60 day visa deadline until two days ago when, completely out of my hands, the dream of making it across in 60 days was shattered…